web literacy

Phew, what a month it has been. Travelling across the country, talking Mozilla, its projects and the impact it has created – one awesome ride, I should say. This is the first of four events I conducted during a 4 week period from Feb 21 – March 21.

It all started with a mail from this guy, asking me to judge a webmaker event as part of Cultura 2015, in CMRIT Bangalore. Yeah, it was a shocker to me as well.

Abraar – CMRIT’s MozGuy

Well, I had to give a demo of the webmaker tools which was followed by the actual hack. Surprise surprise! Jafar and I get roses, yes real roses. The icing on the cake is that Jafar, was completely unaware of this. I had an idea that they’d welcome us – but definitely not with roses.

Jafar with his rose

No guesses for the theme of the competition – it was the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015or Your favorite TV Show. With all the fever set in, it was the perfect time for the creative lot to spin out their inspiring ideas into apps. And so did the participants.

Amazing crowd at Cultura

Maker at work

For the prelims, we had some amazing makes – you can find them all here on the etherpad. We didn’t have a time limit for the prelims as it was the first time participants were exposed to the webmaker tools. For the finals, we did have a time slot of 45 minutes, and what people can do in 45 minutes is really brilliant. The theme for the finals was ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Mission – yes, we were the first to get into the Mars orbit on first attempt. We had some surreal makes, and judging them was no easy task for Jafar and me.

And we have a winner!

I had great fun, teaching people how to use webmaker tools in the first half – followed by evaluating their makes in the second half. The makes were witty, creative and most importantly opened up the doors for everyone present to delve into the amazing world of open web. Special thanks for the CMRIT team for having Jafar and me there – you guys were awesome.